The Dealmaster: A grab bag of technology!

Ars partners with LogicBuy to present to you some choice kit.

Ars Technica presents "The Dealmaster," a short list of selected deals from our partners at LogicBuy. Each sale item has been chosen by Ars for its interest to our discerning audience. We will try this for the next several weeks to see if it's something that is useful to our readers, and feedback in the comments is welcome. If there's anything specific you'd like us to focus on, let us know.

Greetings, Ars Technicans! Prepare yourself to experience an amazing cavalcade of savings, a veritable font of ridiculously low prices, and incredible sales of such astounding proportions that your very mind might be ripped free from its moorings! Prepare yourself for...THE DEALMASTER.

I am your host, the Dealmaster Himself. It is a position of almost indescribable import, one which I have attained through decades of study at the feet of innumerable Swami masters high in the forbidden mountains of Tibet, and also because I am the new guy at Ars and I'm pretty sure this is part of an elaborate hazing ritual. But fear not, gentle readers, for we now embark on a journey of mythical proportions into a world of savings so utterly epic that reality itself shall quake before their colossal magnitude!

Below this post is a selection of ludicrous deals, culled by The Dealmaster personally from the troves of the magical LogicBuy dwarves, who delve for the deepest of deep discounts. I, The Dealmaster, shall summon them forth from distant chthonic caverns bearing the choicest of their wares. You have but to click below to experience ALL OF THE SAVINGS.

These deals, which I have curated for you using my nearly infinite shopping prowess, shall remain here for one week. After that time, I, The Dealmaster, shall call forth new deals to entice you. The savings shall be yours!

FWIW, I personally don't like the idea of seeing this kind of thing on the FP. It feels tawdry - in contrast to the budget/hot rod/god box recommendations, this feels like Ars is just acting as a passive conduit of advertising from some third party I don't know anything about to my eyeballs. I read Ars for the insight and analysis your authors provide, not because Ars can get me good deals on hardware. I want information, not "buy now as seen on TV call in the next five minutes".

That said - I'm just one guy, and I'm not going to stop reading the site or unsubscribe or move to Canada or anything; I'll just skip these articles. I wouldn't even have posted this, except the article asked for feedback in the comments.

a veritable font of ridiculously low prices, and incredible sales of such astounding proportions that your very mind might be ripped free from its moorings!

I remember when Ars Technica used to be a credible and respectable source for science and technology stories.

I think there is a useful service to be provided here, however having said that some of the qoute does sound like a veritable sales pitch. Is there a way Ars can verify if it receives any thing in return from these sites?

FWIW, I personally don't like the idea of seeing this kind of thing on the FP. It feels tawdry - in contrast to the budget/hot rod/god box recommendations, this feels like Ars is just acting as a passive conduit of advertising from some third party I don't know anything about to my eyeballs. I read Ars for the insight and analysis your authors provide, not because Ars can get me good deals on hardware. I want information, not "buy now as seen on TV call in the next five minutes".

That said - I'm just one guy, and I'm not going to stop reading the site or unsubscribe or move to Canada or anything; I'll just skip these articles. I wouldn't even have posted this, except the article asked for feedback in the comments.

Especially considering that Ars is using bit.ly to mask the two different ad sites Ars is passing each of these links through.

I was considering picking up the Roku 2 XD as a gift. Though unfortunately, US only. I have to agree with Control Group on this matter. It feels tawdry. I appreciate the effort to bringing good deals to followers of the site, but it doesn't seem like that to me. If it was better done, more deals, & more availability it would be a bit more acceptable. Though, I understand the flip-side. Your site, and you need the money.Nowhere as bad as AnandTech though.

a veritable font of ridiculously low prices, and incredible sales of such astounding proportions that your very mind might be ripped free from its moorings!

I remember when Ars Technica used to be a credible and respectable source for science and technology stories.

Slashdot is --> that way.

+1.

Give it break with the kvetching. Everybody needs to pay the bills and if they can offer a bit of service to boot in the end it's a win. Don't like it, just skip the article.

This falls down a little bit when you take into account that subscriptors are paying for the privilege of not seeing advertising, but do see this article.

Note that I'm not personally bothered by this; I've long said if there was a way to maintain all my subscriptor perks but still see ads, I would do it - Ars deserves the revenue they get from advertising. But if you're making an argument from principle based on the fairness of revenue generation, it's important to consider the experience of people who do subscribe specifically to not see ads.

Combining advertisements with news in this way is a very slippery slope. At a minimum, Ars has to be clear about what stories contain paid advertisements and what ones don't.

When you start presenting ads in the same way that you present news, your news can no longer be trusted as not being influenced (or controlled) by external commercial interests.

I edited my original post. It was a bit hasty. Thanks.

Control Group wrote:

This falls down a little bit when you take into account that subscriptors are paying for the privilege of not seeing advertising, but do see this article.

Note that I'm not personally bothered by this; I've long said if there was a way to maintain all my subscriptor perks but still see ads, I would do it - Ars deserves the revenue they get from advertising. But if you're making an argument from principle based on the fairness of revenue generation, it's important to consider the experience of people who do subscribe specifically to not see ads.

You're correct. As I stated above I was a bit hasty in belting that out, thanks.

I welcome the new addition. I read most articles on here, the ones that don't call out to me, I pass on. I think if it's titled in such a manner that regular site users know what that the article is the weekly ad, and they don't want to read it, they won't.

That being said, however, there's one thing that is a huge, huge annoyance that recently I noticed Tom's Hardware doing: promoting their "Tom's Pro" articles to be recycled in their list of top articles. Often in those articles were what borders on advertising. I almost stopped reading that site, but they seem to have stopped doing it as often.

So please don't pin these articles to the top, or recycle them back up. Besides that, I'm a tech guy, I like reading about tech news and tech deals. So this is great with me.

I get that these aren't intended to be full articles, but its very seldom that i come across something on Ars that is of no use to me at all (not being from the US). Event the budget/hotrod PC build articles are still easily convertible for me (simply multiply by 8 and a bit.. lame exchange rate), but this just makes me sad about things i cant have :-(

Lee Hutchinson / Lee is the Senior Reviews Editor at Ars and is responsible for the product news and reviews section. He also knows stuff about enterprise storage, security, and manned space flight. Lee is based in Houston, TX.